Tag: Neo-Darwinism
Research on Ancient DNA Could Test Predictions of Non-Darwinian Speciation Models
Independent groups of researchers (e.g., Hössjer et al. 2016), more or less skeptical of common ancestry, have suggested the alternative model of initial heterozygotic diversity.
A Friendly Letter to the Heartland Institute and Other Advocates of Free Speech on Global Warming
Climate skeptics and Darwin doubters now have a common opponent, and we’re going to be linked and attacked in many of the same ways.
Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on the Empirical Problems with Neo-Darwinism
“As a physicist, I should like to critically object that this model has not been supported by an affirmative estimate of probabilities.”
Why Does Ruse Act Like He’s an Expert on Theology?
Several months ago, I participated in a two-hour radio “debate” with Michael Ruse (along with Guillermo Gonzalez and Carlos Calle) about design in cosmology and astronomy. Several times, Michael Ruse lectured me about Christian theology. But it had a surreal quality to it, since he was talking about the theology he (as an agnostic) preferred, but he kept acting as if he was representing Christian theology accurately. I finally insisted that I actually did know a good bit about theology and that he was just making stuff up. Ruse’s responses to Stephen Fuller in the Guardian over ID have that same, surreal quality. For instance, here’s how he distinguishes the difference between the Protestant and Catholic views of justification:
Interview With Author of New Paper on the Limits of the Darwinian Mechanism
Pretty much everyone agrees that natural selection acting on random genetic mutations can explain some things. The really interesting question is, how much can it explain? Since Darwin’s mechanism seems intuitively plausible, we’re often tempted just to trust our intuitions rather than to look at the hard data. And yet the data increasingly show that, whatever its intuitive attractions, the powers of selection and mutation are surprisingly limited. In many cases, new biological functions require several mutations. And everyone agrees that natural selection doesn’t have foresight. But it’s widely assumed that if each of the individual mutations leading to new functions are themselves adaptive, then natural selection can traverse the pathway. Again, this makes intuitive sense. But what about the Read More ›